


What If. What If. What If

by buckcheeks



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes Returns, Hurt No Comfort, Introspection, M/M, a look into the mind of Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 15:20:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20117242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckcheeks/pseuds/buckcheeks
Summary: Bucky looking back at his life and asking a series of what if. What if things play out differently? What if Hydra had never got to him?





	What If. What If. What If

**Author's Note:**

> Listen. English isn't my first language so cut me some slack

He didn’t ask for any of this, he never asked to be drafted to fight in a war that is bigger than he is. Definitely didn't ask to become the world's longest-serving prisoner of war and to be used as a weapon by the very people he stands against. He just wanted to be a regular person, not some super-soldier dosed up on God-knows-what. He wants the war to end, to go home with his family; to have his mother hold him as he cries into her shoulder and have her tell him that the war had ended and he is safe, that he is no longer strapped to that table in Austria, that Zola is gone and can no longer hurt him, to watch his sisters grow up and create their own happiness, to spend his days with Steve and maybe one day have history call them best friends when they’re clearly more than best friends. He wants to rest and know that he’s finally free and safe. That he is no longer staring into a scope waiting for the right moment to take a life. Back then all he wanted was to live past the war. Even when they had first taken him, he was still holding onto a strand of hope that he would make it out. Alive. 

Except he didn’t make it out when the war ended. He made it out seventy years later in a world that doesn’t remember him. Not that it matters because in the end he is alive even if everything else that he dreams of never had the chance to come true. And after everything is said and done he still lays awake at night dreaming of what if. What if he was strong enough to hold onto the bar and reach out to Steve? What if he was given a few more seconds because Steve was so close? What if that ray didn't blast him out of the train at all? What if he died in that fall? What if he could’ve had everything he ever wanted? What if. What if. What if.

Back then Steve and him were just two kids from Brooklyn with dreams too big for their world. Higher education wasn’t a thing when you’re poor, sickly, and have to eat. Thanks to the serum, Steve is no longer the sickly 5’4” asthmatic kid knocking on death's door. And him? He’s nothing but Steve’s sidekick. Steve can be the artist he always wanted to be and Bucky can study the vast unknown of space. Both of them can look at the same night sky and both see two very different worlds. Where Steve sees art wonder and beauty Bucky sees a destination waiting to be explored. He wanted to study the stars, the sun, the planets, the asteroids, and the moons within it. And after everything, they could get a home somewhere in the country, far away from the eyes of nosy neighbors. It won't be the white picket fence one would think of, but it was something both of them fought for. They could have taken in a kid or two who are just like them, give those kids the same love their family had given them all those years ago. Bucky would have a family of his own with his Steve, both living in the shadow of Captain Steven Grant Rogers and Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. Except they’re only dreams and desire. 

Since the Asset’s last and final mission, it isn’t Hydra and their tortures that keep him up at night. It’s the boy and the man from the Greatest Generation with shattered dreams that never sleeps-afraid that if he sleeps everything he fought for will be taken away from him again.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Find me on twitter follow for sad Bucky contents


End file.
